ALEX: "Coming into the Major I had come up with a completely new system, but it didn't work out"

Vitality have advanced to the playoffs with a dominant win over MOUZ and we talked to Alex "⁠ALEX⁠" McMeekin to get his thoughts on the team's up-and-down Major so far.

After just making it through the New Challengers stage with a 3-2 record, Vitality entered the second stage with two convincing wins over North and FaZe before losing to ENCE, a match-up they had dominated throughout 2019.

In the fourth round, the Frenchmen were back in the driving seat with a confident showing against MOUZ to qualify for the playoffs. Afterward, we got a hold of ALEX to talk through the issues Vitality have faced throughout the first two stages and what we can expect from them in bracket play.

Going back to yesterday, you lost to ENCE for the first time after establishing an edge over them over the course of the year. What happened there, was it a difference ENCE that you faced yesterday?

It was definitely a different ENCE, they seemed like they don't care much because they know that they're making a change after the Major. We've always beat them, but they've always been really good, but they maybe had some mental blockage going against us. Now because they don't really care they just beat us and we played terribly bad yesterday. We weren't in a good mindset yesterday, we didn't have the togetherness and the teamplay that makes us a really good team. Everyone speaks about ZywOo, but if you look at most of his frags, everyone is flashed and stuff, so it's just like... I don't get the whole thing. But yeah, we weren't on point teamplay wise and it's just how we beat top teams that's how you have to do it.

Today was obviously a very different story, mouz didn't really have much of a chance. kennyS was complementing mouz's Vertigo, how innovative they were on the new version, did you have a good idea of what you were up against?

Yeah. Luckily for us, we practiced them a few days before the start of the Major I think and they were already playing this style, obviously, and the fact that we had the chance to play against it, it's not just that we saw what they were doing on GOTVs, but we actually experienced it once before and it just made life easier for us. We knew what to expect, even our T side, that's not how we normally play it, but we knew how they would play the CT side, so we just kept on going four A every round because woxic usually plays alone and stuff. It was basically fully antistrat.

These past two stages have been kind of shaky from you, especially the first, and we've seen very different kinds of Vitality across the past couple of weeks. It doesn't really look like we can get a clear idea of which Vitality we're seeing, what can we expect for the playoffs?

Just look at Vitality in playoffs everywhere. We are always much better when we get on stage because we enjoy it so much and all the problems seem to disappear. Even in-game problems we've been having for months, when we get on stage everything is fixed for some reason, I don't know why. As long as we turn up as we usually do on stage, then you should have a good Vitality.

apEX was talking in our interview a couple of days ago about there being too many voices sometimes, and there have been a lot of switches in leadership between you and NBK. Is that something that you've been able to resolve now?

Coming into the Major, on T sides I had come up with a new system on how I wanted us to play, a completely new system, and it didn't work out, apEX didn't feel comfortable in it. We got to the first stage and we played one or two games with it and I could tell that it wasn't going to work. It's been a tiring week talking to the guys thinking about what to do, asking them what they want to be doing, and trying to work around that. Coming into here, obviously we had some maps where apEX was already comfortable so it was fine, but some of the others we've been having to find workarounds on, I've been playing positions that I usually don't play just to make sure they feel comfortable. And that's what you gotta do.

What made you feel that was necessary, to come up with a new system?

We have a style that is very dependent on apEX's and my energy in-game and our communication and I felt like this system would try to make us more consistent, with other players having more responsibilities, much more to do and much more to say, but it didn't work out. It's just a case of finding a new way to get everyone involved because it's very tiring for apEX me to be constantly shouting and stuff. It was just trying to find a way to be more consistent, but for the Major we had no trouble reverting back to the old system and shouting every game, it's no problem.